Hi - this is Srinivasan Sampathkumar from Triplicane. I have a passion for Marine Insurance, Cricket and of course Temples especially Thiruvallikkeni.
From Sept 2009, I am posting my thoughts in this blog ; From July 2010, my postings on Temples & Tamil are on my other blog titled "Kairavini Karayinile " (www.tamil.sampspeak.in)
Request you to keep providing your feedback which will help me improve and present better.

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Sure
you would have heard this story ~ and would have your own answer and theory ..
.. .. to a similar Q – Sujatha wrote a classical answer in Enthiran. The Q goes
like this :

As
you are standing near a control lever, you see a runway wagon darting on the
railway track - on the track a group of
people are standing unaware and would get crushed by the oncoming truck; you
have the option, if you operate the lever, the course would change and let the
wagon go on a track, that is rarely used.
Thinking that rail would never come on the lane, a small girl is happily
playing on this track. By handling the lever,
you can save the lives of a few (who are at fault for standing on the track)
but would end up becoming a tool in the killing of an innocent girl who did
nothing wrong in playing on untenanted track.
So,

·Will you remain silent
– allowing the fate to happen – death of some people

·Handle the lever,
divert the wagon, save the lives of people but sadly be a party to the death of
an innocent child.

Which
is the most ethical choice?

Now read this
further .. .. .. … a self-driving car carrying a family of four on
a rural two-lane highway spots a bouncing ball ahead. As the vehicle approaches
a child runs out to retrieve the ball. Should the car risk its passengers’
lives by swerving to the side—where the edge of the road meets a steep cliff?
Or should the car continue on its path, ensuring its passengers’ safety at the
child’s expense? This scenario and many others pose moral and ethical dilemmas
that carmakers, car buyers and regulators must address before vehicles should
be given full autonomy, according to a study published in Science.

Self-driving cars
are almost here, but one big question remains - how do they make hard choices
in a life and death situation? Now researchers have demonstrated that smart
vehicles are capable of making ethical decisions on the road, just like we do
everyday. By studying human behaviour in a series of virtual reality-based
trials, the team were able to describe moral decision making in the form of an
algorithm. This is huge because previously, researchers have assumed that
modelling complex ethical choices is out of reach.

"But we found
quite the opposite," says Leon Sütfeld, one of the researchers from the
University of Osnabruck, Germany. "Human behaviour in dilemma situations
can be modelled by a rather simple value-of-life-based model that is attributed
by the participant to every human, animal, or inanimate object."

If you take a quick
glance at the statistics, humans can be pretty terrible drivers that are often
prone to distraction, road rage and drink driving. It's no surprise then that
there are almost 1.3 million deaths on the road worldwide each year, with 93
percent of accidents in the US caused by human error. But is kicking back in
the seat of a self-driving car really a safer option? The outlook is promising.
One report estimates that driverless vehicles could reduce the number of road
deaths by 90 percent, which works out to be around 300,000 saved lives a decade
in the US alone.

Despite the glowing
figures, developing a self-driving car that can respond to unpredictable
situations on the road hasn't been a smooth ride. One stumbling block is
figuring out how these smart cars will deal with road dilemmas that require
ethical decision-making and moral judgement.

While previous
research has shown that self-driving cars can avoid accidents by driving slow
at all times or switching to a different driving style, following a set of
programmed 'rules' isn't enough to survive the demands of inner city traffic.
In an improbable scenario as discussed earlier that of - 'trolley dilemma', a thought experiment that
tests how we make moral decisions. In this no-win scenario, can a
driverless car make the best choice? The tricky thing with these kinds of decisions is that we
tend to make a choice based on the context of the situation, which is difficult
to mirror in the form of an algorithm programmed into a machine.

Using virtual
reality to simulate a foggy road in a suburban setting, the team placed a group
of participants in the driver's seat in a car on a two-lane road. A variety of
paired obstacles, such as humans, animals and objects, appeared on the virtual
road. In each scenario, the participants were forced to decide which obstacle
to save and which to run over. Next, the researchers used these results to test
three different models predicting decision making. The first predicted that
moral decisions could be explained by a simple value-of-life model, a
statistical term measuring the benefits of preventing a death. The second model
assumed that the characteristics of each obstacle, such as the age of a person,
played a role in the decision making process. Lastly, the third model predicted
that the participants were less likely to make an ethical choice when they had
to respond quickly.

After comparing the
results of the analysis, the team found the first model most accurately
described the ethical choices of the participants. This
means that self-driving cars and other automated machines can make human-like
moral choices using a relatively simple algorithm. But before you throw
away your driver's license, it's important to remember that these findings open
up a whole new realm of ethical and moral debate that need to be considered
before self-driving cars are out on the road.
While we still have a way to go before we take our hands off the
steering wheel for good, these findings are a big leap forward in the world of
intelligent machines.

oTo a similar Q in Enthiran, Bohra would ask Chitti, the
robot, whether he would save Einstein or
the child ~ Chitti would instantly reply : ‘hypothetical Q’

oIn the ethical Q at
the start – if you are to say it is group of sheep versus a single human life –
most people would tend to say that they would save the human life – so animal
lives are less important than humans is the mindset !